I will try no salt again. Do you want me to do the dough mixing at home or at market? A little dough doesnít cost much at all.

Norma,

As between using your mixer at home or your Hobart mixer at market, the Hobart mixer would be the better choice because it means one less variable. However, for now, I think that you should be able to make a test dough at home using your home mixer that has the same finished characteristics as the ones you last made at market with your Hobart mixer although you may have to knead the home dough a bit longer because of the different machine and because of the lack of salt to strengthen the dough. If you do not get the sinking of the crust when using that test dough, that should mean that you should be able to replicate the dough with your Hobart mixer at some future time should you decide to leave the salt out again.

As between using your mixer at home or your Hobart mixer at market, the Hobart mixer would be the better choice because it means one less variable. However, for now, I think that you should be able to make a test dough at home using your home mixer that has the same finished characteristics as the ones you last made at market with your Hobart mixer although you may have to knead the home dough a bit longer because of the different machine and because of the lack of salt to strengthen the dough. If you do not get the sinking of the crust when using that test dough, that should mean that you should be able to replicate the dough with your Hobart mixer at some future time should you decide to leave the salt out again.

Peter

Peter,

I can make a test dough without salt at home in the KitchenAid mixer. I will have to get a steel pan from market and some cheese first though. Iíll make the dough as soon as I get the things I need. Do you want me to just make a pepperoni and cheese pizza, or do you want me to add lots of dressings on the tempered skin? If the test dough works out okay I can try to mix a dough without salt in the Hobart on Monday.

Here's the pie I made with the dough that Norma gave me yesterday. I let it proof on my kitchen counter for about 2 hrs. before baking at 525 convection. I didn't time the bake but just watched until it looked done, probably 12-14 minutes. I used the cheese shown in the picture below and a home-made sauce that a friend gave me to try. The bottom cooked much differently than it does at market. I don't know if it's the oven, the extra day of cold fermentation or what. The crumb seems a bit more open as well. The cheese is smooth, creamy and buttery tasting. I'm eating it right now as I type. Simply delicious!

Your Buddyís clone pizza looks very good and so does the Semi Soft Part Skim Raw Milk Farmers cheese. I see your cheese also caramelized well on the rim. I see your crumb is more open than mine and does look very tender. Did you bake on your pizza stone?

I only weighed the AMPI mild white cheddar and the mozzarella blend for one of the Buddyís clones I made yesterday for a cheese pizza, but that weight was 6 ounces. That was enough cheeses for a Buddyís clone in my opinion to have enough melted cheese on the top and also have the caramelized edges. I donít think I am not using as much cheeses on my Buddyís clones as Buddyís does, unless they also use less cheese on some of their pizzas from freehanding the cheese.

I have always been somewhat skeptical about the amount of cheese that Buddy's uses on its pizzas. From what we have read and been told, supposedly 8 ounces of cheese is used on a 4-square and double that (a pound) for an 8-square. Elsewhere, I read that 15 ounces of cheese is used for the 8-square. Even when we were given the fat nutrition numbers by Buddy's, I had a difficult time squaring those numbers with the the Buddy's Nutrition information. Part of the problem may be that a slice from a 4-square pizza is not the same size as a slice from an 8-square pizza. I have more to say about this in the next comment but I would imagine that that discrepancy would have posed problems for the people who came up with the Buddy's Nutrition numbers, an exercise that would have been further complicated by the fact that the workers who assemble the Buddy's pizzas free throw the cheese. The Buddy's Nutrition numbers do not distinguish between a slice from a 4-square and a slice from an 8-square. Also, the actual dimensions of a slice will vary because pizzas are sliced by humans, not machines.

Steve has the pictures on his camera that he said he is going to post of the one 8-square Pete-zzaís TexItaliano pizza that shows how much higher in height that crust was at the edges and center of the pizza. As I posted last evening I wonder why that pizza got so high in height when I used 19 ounces of dough and the tempered dough didnít look any more fermented than other Buddyís clones I made yesterday. Steve and I both wondered how that happened.

I think a good part of the explanation might be attributable to the relative dimensions of the two pans--the 8" x 10" and 10" x 14" pans. Just using these dimensions for convenience in this discussion, the surface area of the 8" x 10" pan is 80 square inches, and the surface area of the 10" x 14" pan is 140 square inches. That is a ratio of 140/80 = 1.75. As was discussed some time ago in this thread, that means that a slice from an 8-square pizza baked in the 10" x 14" pan will have a smaller size than a slice from a 4-square pizza baked in the 8" x 10" pan. However, since the amount of dough used in the 10" x 14" pan is double that used in the 8" x 10" pan (19 ounces versus 9.5 ounces in your case), a slice from the 10" x 14" pan should be thicker than one from a 4-square baked in the 8" x 10" pan (assuming that the two pizzas bake up the same). To put it in another way, to have the heights of the two pizzas be the same, the larger pan would have to have a square surface area of 160 square inches rather than 140 square inches. In essence, you have a smaller but thicker slice from the 10" x 14" pan than from the 8" x 10" pan.

Norma,I have always been somewhat skeptical about the amount of cheese that Buddy's uses on its pizzas. From what we have read and been told, supposedly 8 ounces of cheese is used on a 4-square and double that (a pound) for an 8-square. Elsewhere, I read that 15 ounces of cheese is used for the 8-square. Even when we were given the fat nutrition numbers by Buddy's, I had a difficult time squaring those numbers with the the Buddy's Nutrition information. Part of the problem may be that a slice from a 4-square pizza is not the same size as a slice from an 8-square pizza. I have more to say about this in the next comment but I would imagine that that discrepancy would have posed problems for the people who came up with the Buddy's Nutrition numbers, an exercise that would have been further complicated by the fact that the workers who assemble the Buddy's pizzas free throw the cheese. The Buddy's Nutrition numbers do not distinguish between a slice from a 4-square and a slice from an 8-square. Also, the actual dimensions of a slice will vary because pizzas are sliced by humans, not machines.I think a good part of the explanation might be attributable to the relative dimensions of the two pans--the 8" x 10" and 10" x 14" pans. Just using these dimensions for convenience in this discussion, the surface area of the 8" x 10" pan is 80 square inches, and the surface area of the 10" x 14" pan is 140 square inches. That is a ratio of 140/80 = 1.75. As was discussed some time ago in this thread, that means that a slice from an 8-square pizza baked in the 10" x 14" pan will have a smaller size than a slice from a 4-square pizza baked in the 8" x 10" pan. However, since the amount of dough used in the 10" x 14" pan is double that used in the 8" x 10" pan (19 ounces versus 9.5 ounces in your case), a slice from the 10" x 14" pan should be thicker than one from a 4-square baked in the 8" x 10" pan (assuming that the two pizzas bake up the same). To put it in another way, to have the heights of the two pizzas be the same, the larger pan would have to have a square surface area of 160 square inches rather than 140 square inches. In essence, you have a smaller but thicker slice from the 10" x 14" pan than from the 8" x 10" pan.

Peter

Peter,

I also am somewhat skeptical about the amount of cheese that Buddyís uses on its pizzas. I know from what we have read and been told, supposedly 8 ounces of cheese is used on a a 4-square and double of that for an 8-square. I didnít recall you had read 15 ounces of cheese is used for the 8-square. I know the slices from a 4-square and an 8-square arenít the same in size. Steve and I have been trying to cut the 8-square pies so they look like the 4-square slices, but there is no way to do that. It seems like the customers are getting shortchanged when buying a slice from an 8-square pizza. I can imagine those discrepancies in slices could have given problems for the people that came up with the Buddyís Nutrition numbers. I wonder how reliable those Nutrition Facts are for Buddyís pizzas.

I understand your explanations about the relative dimensions of the two pans. I can now understand why the 8-square Buddyís clones were higher in height.

I also am somewhat skeptical about the amount of cheese that Buddyís uses on its pizzas. I know from what we have read and been told, supposedly 8 ounces of cheese is used on a a 4-square and double of that for an 8-square. I didnít recall you had read 15 ounces of cheese is used for the 8-square. I know the slices from a 4-square and an 8-square arenít the same in size. Steve and I have been trying to cut the 8-square pies so they look like the 4-square slices, but there is no way to do that. It seems like the customers are getting shortchanged when buying a slice from an 8-square pizza. I can imagine those discrepancies in slices could have given problems for the people that came up with the Buddyís Nutrition numbers. I wonder how reliable those Nutrition Facts are for Buddyís pizzas.

Me: I have been looking at the Nutrition Facts for your pizzas at your website. Can you tell me if a "Slice" refers to a slice from the larger pan or the smaller pan? As best I can tell, the two slices would have different weights. Also, as one who is watching his weight, can you tell me how much cheese is used on the two sizes of pizzas (I think you call them four-squares and eight-squares)?

Buddy's: The slices are the same size in a 4-square pizza as in an 8-square pizza. The only difference is the number of slices offered.

We use almost 1 lb. (16 oz.) of cheese on an 8-squre pizza. This works out to approximately 2 oz. per slice.

Me: Thank you very much for your reply. However, I am still a bit confused. I was told by a friend that the 4-square pizzas are baked in an 8" x 10" pan and that the 8-square pizzas are baked in a 10" x 14" pan. Since the larger pan is not twice the size as the smaller pan, wouldn't the sizes of the slices be different for the two pans?

Buddy's: All our pizzas are hand-made and toppings (to include cheese) are hand applied. The nutritional values on our website are approximations because of this. The quantity of dough used in our 4-square pizza and the amount of cheese hand-applied is half of what we use/apply on our 8-square pizza. Please also note that our pizzas are hand-cut. Each slice therefore, is not necessarily the same size every time.

As for the slice sales, I do not believe that Buddy's short changes its customers by selling them slices from the 8-square pizzas as opposed to the 4-square pizzas. To the best of my knowledge, Buddy's sells the slices only in its strictly carryout locations, of which I believe there are only two or three such locations out of a total of nine Buddy's locations. And, at those slice locations, the only carryout slices are cheese and cheese and pepperoni. You can see an example of a typical Buddy's menu for those locations at http://www.buddyspizza.com/documents/Carryout107.pdf (Royal Oak). I think that the slices at the carryout locations might be from a 4-square or an 8-square but not both. Otherwise, customers would have caught on quickly and someone would have raised the issue of slice size.

Was it the cheese that made you replace the "Simply delicious" comment and then made you replace it with the "Insanely Amazing" comment, or was it the combination of everything?Norma

Norma, I guess it was the whole package. The crust was outstanding. The sauce was different from any I can remember having before.(I need to ask Carl for the recipe!) and the cheese was also really good. I still have one package of that. I'll save it for you to try next week. Meanwhile, I'll try to get more. You never know with that little store though. Often times they have something once and never again.

Hope it was the cheese cause that new "raw milk farmers" melted and looked like...buttah.

Yeah Bob, that was the s**t alright! I hope I can get more. I can get regular plain old "farmers cheese" just about anywhere around here but I've never tried it. I wonder how close it is to what I used today? Hmmmm............

After my last post, I decided to call the Buddy's Bloomfield location, which is one of its carryout locations, to see if I could confirm what I said in my last post about the slices. I spoke with Lisa, the lady who answered the phone. She confirmed everything I said in my last post but for one aspect. She said the they use the 8-square pizza for slice sales but the slices are cut into six pieces rather than eight. I asked her if that was because the slices would otherwise be too small, and she said yes.

The above information then gave me pause to wonder what kind of slices dicepackage ordered and showed in Reply 127 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3783.msg81715.html#msg81715. As noted in that post, the slices were purchased from the Point Plaza Buddy's location, which is indicated by Buddy's to be a Restaurant/Bar/Carry-out (http://www.buddyspizza.com/documents/Carryout110.pdf). So, I decided to call that location. The fellow who answered the phone told me that they do sell slices, and that they are cut from the 8-squares, again in six pieces. If dicepackage actually got four slices from an 8-square pizza that was cut into six pieces, that would change the numbers that I previously used for calculation purposes. I will have to revisit his numbers to see whether it is possible to determine what an 8-square cheese and pepperoni pizza weighs and work backwards to see if it is possible to get individual ingredient weights.

I also asked the fellow who answered the phone at the Point Plaza location whether the other sit-down Buddy's locations also sold slices and he said he didn't know.

Norma, I guess it was the whole package. The crust was outstanding. The sauce was different from any I can remember having before.(I need to ask Carl for the recipe!) and the cheese was also really good. I still have one package of that. I'll save it for you to try next week. Meanwhile, I'll try to get more. You never know with that little store though. Often times they have something once and never again.

Thanks Steve! I will be anxious to try the cheese and am glad you liked your Detroit style pizza so much.

After my last post, I decided to call the Buddy's Bloomberg location, which is one of its carryout locations, to see if I could confirm what I said in my last post about the slices. I spoke with Lisa, the lady who answered the phone. She confirmed everything I said in my last post but for one aspect. She said the they use the 8-square pizza for slice sales but the slices are cut into six pieces rather than eight. I asked her if that was because the slices would otherwise be too small, and she said yes.

The above information then gave me pause to wonder what kind of slices dicepackage ordered and showed in Reply 127 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3783.msg81715.html#msg81715. As noted in that post, the slices were purchased from the Point Plaza Buddy's location, which is indicated by Buddy's to be a Restaurant/Bar/Carry-out (http://www.buddyspizza.com/documents/Carryout110.pdf). So, I decided to call that location. The fellow who answered the phone told me that they do sell slices, and that they are cut from the 8-squares, again in six pieces. If dicepackage actually got four slices from an 8-square pizza that was cut into six pieces, that would change the numbers that I previously used for calculation purposes. I will have to revisit his numbers to see whether it is possible to determine what an 8-square cheese and pepperoni pizza weighs and work backwards to see if it is possible to get individual ingredient weights.

I also asked the fellow who answered the phone at the Point Plaza location whether the other sit-down Buddy's locations also sold slices and he said he didn't know.

Peter

Peter,

It was good you decided to call the Buddyís Bloomberg location and the Point Plaza Buddyís location for more information about how the slices that are sold. I can understand that information gave you pause to wonder what kind of slices dicepackage ordered and showed. I can see if dicepackage got 4 slices from the 8-square pizza that was cut into six pieces that would change the numbers that you have previously used for calculation purposes. I think you have a lot of work cut-out for you if decide to revisit his numbers to see whether is possible to determine what an 8-square cheese and pepperoni pizza weighs and then work backwards to see if it is possible to get individual ingredient weights. Good luck with figuring all of that out if you can. I can see that will be a tall order to accomplish.

I also now understand I will have to cut the 8-square Buddyís clones differently than I am doing. I sure donít want my customers to think I am short-changing someone in the size of their slices from a 4-square to an 8-square pizza. Next thing I know I will be referred to as the rip-off in the slice of my slices. Maybe I even will try my larger steel pan for a Buddy's clone sometime in the future.

Norma, I guess it was the whole package. The crust was outstanding. The sauce was different from any I can remember having before.(I need to ask Carl for the recipe!) and the cheese was also really good. I still have one package of that. I'll save it for you to try next week. Meanwhile, I'll try to get more. You never know with that little store though. Often times they have something once and never again.

I contacted Stanislaus Food Products this morning and asked if I could try a can of SuperDolce Super Sweet-Super Heavy Pizza sauce. They lady I spoke to said they would send a sample can out today.

I find it interesting that the SuperDolce Super Sweet-Super Heavy Pizza Sauce says there is a tradeoff and it contains less moisture-retaining pectin, so it wonít hold as much added moisture as its cousin SaporitoSuper Heavy Pizza Sauce. I guess that means that not as much water can be added to the SuperDolce.